Going on a yoga retreat will change your life. I say this from years of experience, having both attended and led yoga retreats around the world. Yoga retreats blend 1) the physical and mental benefits of yoga and 2) the presence of mind from meditation with 3) the spiritual freedom and exploration of travel. Retreat is a wonderful reset for body and mind, and I can’t recommend the experience more highly!
For me, a yoga retreat has two pillars:
| Pillar 1 | Pillar 2 |
| Yoga + Meditation | Travel |
The benefits of yoga
Yoga grounds me, centers me. Imagine that within you, somewhere between your belly button and your heart, a glowing ball of warm sunlight shone forth. Even on your most stressful days, that calm, that center is there. It remains with you. Finding that calm may take some digging, but, when you reach for it, it’s there.
Yoga makes space for this glowy center. Yoga silences the noise from the outside world and lets us find and re-find this same glowing interior. Yoga shortens our path from stress response back to calm.
The benefits of travel
Travel is pure joy. In my heart of hearts travel is my happy place. I write more, read more, move about fully aware, eyes wide open, fully present. Travel is the ultimate sensory overload. I try new experiences, tastes, smell new smells, and explore. All of this restores my soul. This is why the first iteration of this blog I called “Wondering Soul, Wandering Soles”: Soul = yoga, soles = travel. Years before I created my company (Wondering Soul Yoga) out of my blog, this ethos, this duality guided the way.
What if travel balanced both adventure, physical wellness, and mindfulness?
Enter: Yoga retreats.
The benefits of yoga retreats
Yoga retreats are the perfect blend of wellness and travel. They are the perfect way to reset and unwind from the stress of daily life.
When I lead my Morocco yoga retreat, everything falls into place. There’s nowhere else in the world I need to be. The week these women and I spend together is transformative, life changing, magical. We do yoga every day (sometimes twice per day). We eat and cook delicious Moroccan food. We meditate, breathe, journal, laugh, and cry together. We discuss issues that are relevant and important to Morocco and Moroccans with subject matter experts.
Retreat reveals to us:
- Who you want to be
- What really matters
Retreat is a release, an emotional catharsis of the year(s) of stress and anxiety of our post-pandemic reality. Retreat gives us the time and distance (literal and figurative) to assess our lives with new eyes: What’s working and what isn’t. Retreat lets us determine if we are showing up in our lives in the way we want and if we’re surrounding ourselves with the people who mean the very most to us.
This is some of the magic of my yoga retreats:
- The calm centering energy of yoga
- The food, history, and culture of Morocco
- The friendships that begin or deepen on retreat
- The long-delayed girls trip
- The open-mindedness
- The shared joy
- The vulnerability
- The intentional, meaningful approach to travel (and by extension life)
- The gift of a long, sustained yoga and meditation practice
- The anticipation
- The newness
- The rest
- The reset
You deserve a break.
When was the last time you did something for yourself?
We – as women – aren’t encouraged to take trips alone or without (male) partners. We’re called selfish and other not-nice names when we break the mold. Going on a yoga retreat is giving yourself a gift. It’s wrapping up a future travel experience in a beautiful box, tying it with a silken ribbon, and opening it for yourself six months later.
You deserve a real break. You deserve rest and a goddamn massage. You and your mental, emotional, spiritual health are worth investing in.
If you don’t, no one else will.
Join me on my Morocco yoga retreat
12 women (who love travel and yoga), 8 days, 3 Moroccan cities. When you join me on retreat you both immerse in the rich culture of Morocco and make time for in-depth yoga and meditation practice.
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